Conventionally, a sitting seat of a vehicle in which a seat body is moved and stowed so that an installation space thereof can be made available as a loading space is known. Specifically, a mode of moving and stowing the seat body includes a mode of flipping up and raising the seat body from a floor surface toward its side. In this case, the seat body is engaged and locked in a flipped-up state by a lock structure provided between the seat body and a vehicle body side panel, toward which the seat body is flipped up.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2005-263007 discloses a technology related to a lock structure for engaging and locking the seat body to the vehicle body side panel. The lock structure has a configuration in which a frame-shaped striker fixed and installed on the seat body or the vehicle body side panel is pushed into a locking device, which acts as the counterpart, whereby the striker and the locking device are engaged and locked to each other. In this disclosure, the striker has an elastically supported configuration so as to be able to perform an oscillating motion, whereby the relative shift in the push-in position with respect to the locking device can be corrected by the oscillating motion.
Thus, there is a need in the art to improve the conventional lock structure for a stowable vehicle seat described above.